A Quick Hit: September Swoon
Photo & Image by WBN
The Dodgers stumble into the final month of the regular season a shadow of themselves.
The end of the 2025 MLB season is around the corner, waiting to put most of the league to bed for the off-season and carry twelve other teams into the playoffs. I can’t wait for it to end, not because I’m looking forward to the playoffs that much; but because this season has been exhausting to watch. As a Dodgers fan, I should still feel good about the team being the defending champions of baseball. The afterglow is still there—the walk-off grand slam will live on forever—but this has been a challenging season for the team and for everyone going on this ride along it. The season started with eight straight wins, the best start for the franchise since it moved to Los Angeles. That record was also good enough to become the best start to a season by any defending champ in the history of MLB. But, it’s not how you start, right?
The Dodgers hit the All-Star break with a 58-39 record and a five and a half game lead in the National League West over the San Diego Padres. Since then, they are below five hundred (20-22), and are clinging to a two and a half game lead (still over the Padres). What was once a fun team to watch play great baseball has become an exercise is managing expectations and frustrations. Sure, they haven’t had a fully assembled and healthy roster at all this season, but they still have a lot of talent on the roster. It trots out there on the field every game, but something is different about the attitude of this team. They have lost more games than they have won these last couple of months, and several of those losses were games the Dodgers could have won. They straight up blew those games. The talent is there, as it was last season, but the passion is missing.
Maybe that’s what happens after you win the World Series. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t been done since the Yankees did it at the end of the last century. Winning it all can put out the fire that burns some athletes to greatness. Maybe that’s part of it. The injuries. Some egos. Better competition. It’s a bunch of things coming together at the right moment to silence the whispers of a repeat. Hell, I glazed the Dodgers with fifteen hundred well composed words back in January for doing this and doing that, making moves and being smart. I titled the article “Kings of L.A.”. The Dodgers weren’t even that this season. I reread that article before I sat down to write this one, and it was excruciating. I was gassed off their World Series win and thrilled by their off-season moves. Who wouldn’t be if that was their team, right? Well, things haven’t gone as planned, and it doesn’t seem like the Dodgers can repeat anymore than the Pirates can make the playoffs.
Any time the team starts to build momentum, they lose three games, or they get swept by the Angels, twice. It’s been brutal, and it is coming to an end soon. It will likely end with fans like me being sad for a minute because the team underperformed. We’ll all hope the team is healthier and better next season, and they will have a shot at both, which is a blessing. Lord, I am grateful for the Dodgers being a competitive team year after year. However, this season kind of sucks, and the kind of miraculous hope it feels like the Dodgers need to repeat as champions is not an easy sell in times like these. Watching them lose to everyone and squander away an opportunity will put hope in a stranglehold.
There’s a small bit of it that is still alive; real hope for Dodgers fans that October will tell a different story. That the Boys in Blue were pacing themselves for this moment. They got healthier, and the defense got better when guys were playing their natural positions; and the offense got better when Max Muncy returned. This last part sounds crazy because it was only four months ago when a lot of Dodgers fans wanted him off the team. That’s what it’s come to. Playing well consistently hasn’t happened on a nightly basis for a long time, and that’s not going to be good enough to win it all. It’s not even good enough to get out of the Wild Card round.
The end might arrive sooner than expected this season.
